Say No To Fitness Marketing Hype (And What To Do Instead)

Fitness marketing is not pretty. It’s a world of lies, half-truths, and pseudo-scientific buzzwords. The bad guys don’t care about the truth. They just want your hard-earned cash.

It’s time to stop. Stop falling for the false promise of flat abs and pounds that melt away, all achievable in just six minutes a day. Ditch those goji berries and come up with a real plan that works in the real world. Which brings us to…

Sally, And Why She’s Lost

Sally is a composite character based on several of my personal training clients. Chances are, she’s a lot like you. She’s sick of her ever-expanding waistline and tired of wondering what to put in her mouth. She wants to rid herself of those exasperating love handles forever.

The only problem is Sally doesn’t know where to look for the answers.

She knows she’s been swindled by magazines, websites, and weight loss companies before. She just doesn’t want to plummet into the same vortex of fitness marketing ploys again.

She decides to stop surrendering to the fraudulent health and fitness advertising and fights back.

Sally Learns There’s No Such Thing As ‘Miracle Abs In Four Weeks’

Sally has lost count the number of times she was overwhelmed with excitement at a new fat loss product arriving at her home. After all, she was going to get abs in four weeks. Sure. she’d been disappointed before. But maybe this time would be different.

So Sally set about following the protocol for her new product with enthusiasm and vigor; just as she’d done so many times before.

But it didn’t end well. In fact, end ended just as all her other efforts had: in failure. So she gave up. Just as she had so many times before.

But then Sally decided to fight back. She finally changed her approach. And so can you.

How To Be Like Sally And Fight Back

First and foremost:

Ignore any claim that involves a specific time frame.

Chances are that time frame has been plucked out of thin air for no reason.

You have to understand that even if you’re doing everything right, you’ll still probably lose fat more slowly than you’d hope and like.

That time frame you’ve got in your head? Double it. Hell, triple it.

Set reasonable expectations from the beginning. This will ensure you’ll continue with your plan for longer than four weeks. Recognize that you need patience and a willingness to put in the hard work over time.

Sally Learns There’s No Such Thing As ‘Flat Belly Superfoods’

Once she started doing things right, Sally learned that the superfoods she’d been buying in the hope they’d help ‘melt that belly fat off’ weren’t actually so super.

They were just foods with a slick marketing behind them.

Sally stopped racking up big bills on blueberries, kale, coconut oil, and goji berries dipped in mermaid saliva in the hope she’d be able to stave off cancer and dementia, while boosting her antioxidant levels and preventing a nuclear war.

How To Be Like Sally And Fight Back: Sally recognized these seemingly miracle-working foods are no better than their old-fashioned substitutes; the ones we’ve been hearing about for years. With sensationalized headlines emerging daily about the benefits or dangers of specific foods, people get confused and lose sight of what really matters.

Be like the new Sally. Say no to the glorified superfoods that don’t really do anything.

Say yes to more fruit, more vegetables, more water, more protein, and more healthy fats, while avoiding processed foods.

Sally Learns There’s No Such Thing As ‘Effortless Fat Loss’

Sally was always confused. She’d been told the weight would simply drop off, the size of her clothes would decrease dramatically, and fat loss would seem like a walk in the park.

Only that never happened.

She got frustrated, struggled with the hunger, and found exercising hard. Despite feeling like she was giving her latest program everything, Sally constantly felt like throwing the towel in.

She’d heard that fat loss was meant to be effortless. So when she struggled, she inevitably blamed herself and gave up.

How To Be Like Sally and Fight Back: Fat loss isn’t trouble-free and painless. It can be frustrating and slow. Sally learned that the hard way. But now she knows she isn’t the only one struggling when the going gets tough. Sally now knows that if she screws up it’s not the end of the world. It happens to everyone. She needs to accept it, move on, and get back on track.

Sally Learns There’s No Such Thing As ‘Toned Arms And Abs’

Sally didn’t want to get too big. Or too muscly. She just wanted to be, you know, toned.

Sally used to hit the gym and crush a workout involving four-kilogram dumbbells and sets of thirty repetitions. She wanted to be ‘cut.’

Six months later, Sally was still lifting those four-kilogram dumbbells and wasn’t any closer to being ‘cut’ or ‘toned.’ Damn.

How To Be Like Sally and Fight Back: Sally learned that you can’t really “tone” a muscle. To get the lean figure you want, you need to build muscle and lose as much body fat as possible. There’s a better way that high reps and light weights: heavier weights and fewer reps.

Sally Learns There’s No Such Thing As An ‘Easy Summer Skin Detox

Once upon a time, Sally thought she needed to try a detox. She tried noni and pomegranate juice, green coffee bean extract, a sweet vegetable and plain carrot smoothie, and, oh, the Dherbs full body cleanse.

She was adamant about finding any way to try to ‘detox.’ The only thing she flushed out from her system was her sanity. And a bit of poo.

How To Be Like Sally and Fight Back: Sally quickly learned that there’s no magic pill, potion, juice, cleanse, magical herb, or pharmaceutical drug that could detoxify her.

Sally learned that, like everyone else, she has a liver and kidney. And her liver and kidney take care of all the ‘detoxing’ she needs. She learned what’s better than miracle detox products: stress management, sleep improvement, lifestyle changes, avoiding junk food, and the real kicker: losing a little bit of body fat.

Sally learned the hard way no amount of ‘six-pack ab blaster’ circuits are going to get her a six-pack, or ‘booty blasting’ exercises are going to shape her glutes the way she’d like. Years of crunching, donkey-kicking, and performing specific fat burning exercises failed. She still looked exactly the same as she had before.

How To Be Like Sally and Fight Back; Sally stopped focusing on targeting specific parts of her body – whether it was her abs, glutes, or arms – and dedicated her time to getting strong and building muscle everywhere.

She realized that targeting a specific body part, with a specific exercise, in the hope of losing body fat in that region was largely a myth.

She got strong through lifting heavy weights with exercises that require a high-calorie demand. She stuck to big compound movements which will subsequently initiate fat loss throughout the entire body, not just the areas she wanted.

She understood that when performing abdominal exercises, for example, she was just training the musculature, and not losing body fat.

Take The Next Step To Be Like Sally

If you’re interested in learning more about where people continue to go wrong when it comes to fat loss, and how best to combat these problems, download my FREE Guide ‘How To Win At Fat Loss’ HERE.

About The Author

Daniel Harrod is a personal trainer and fitness blogger in London, England. He specializes in getting clients the bodies they deserve by getting them off the dieting rollercoaster forever. Check out his website.